The Gang of Five
Beyond the Mysterious Beyond => The Fridge => Topic started by: rhombus on September 22, 2016, 04:26:23 PM
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It appears that a "state actor" has hacked into Yahoo's servers and stolen account information on at least 500 million people. This easily makes it one of the largest cybersecurity breaches in history. If you have a Yahoo account it would be highly advisable for you to change your password and security information at this time.
Source:http://money.cnn.com/2016/09/22/technology...each/index.html (http://money.cnn.com/2016/09/22/technology/yahoo-data-breach/index.html)
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Thanks for letting us know, rhombus! I don't check my mail that often so it would otherwise take me a couple of days to notice the warning in my Yahoo inbox... Had to change my password and disable security questions. :(
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Fortunately, I'm not using it. Quite a shock to hear of crimes of this scale.
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I don't use mine anymore and I'll try to do that,
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Done and done. Sheesh. I hope the guilty party is caught and punished.
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I still don't care since I have many horrible memories of yahoo. So I'm not gonna change my password on there.
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Hope you didn't have any sensitive info on your account.
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So far my account is fine I just looked looked at it. Everything is there and nah just painful stuff back in 2002-2003.
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Hence why when you sign up for a massive service like Google, Yahoo, Bing, Facebook, etc. you should always use a garbage username and password that you don't use anywhere else. My banking and PayPal information is COMPLETELY different from my Google and Yahoo accounts, so if they stole the information in my Yahoo account, no big loss. The problem is, most people use the same darned password for EVERYTHING including their bank accounts, which makes it easy for crooks like this to make hundreds of millions or even BILLIONS of dollars by doing a hack like this.
Another thing that's important is that your RECOVERY email (the email you use if you "forget" your login details) for your bank and PayPal accounts should NOT be a Gmail, Yahoo, or other "free" email service. Otherwise if they get access to your email account, it's easier for them to claim they "lost" your bank account login details and have the bank send them a reset password link through your email.
All of my important stuff is routed through my @austinscomputers.com email addresses. The only thing I use a Gmail, Yahoo, etc. account for is when I sign up for whatever garbage to get a "free" something or other. It's not that @austinscomputers.com is unhackable. It's just that my email server isn't of much interest to hackers because it's not used by MILLIONS of people. Handing over your "real" information and "real" password to Google or Yahoo is just asking for trouble. If anything, sign up for a paid email service. It may cost money, but few people use it compared to all the freebies out there, which make it less attractive to hackers.
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Nah can't afford paid e-mail services so not taking your advice. So far nothing has happened to my email account on yahoo. And paying for a email account is not needed at all it's a waste of money to do that. Free emails are fine you just gotta use better protection and not use very easy passwords anyone can figure out.
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In this day and age a two-step login verification using one's cellphone is a must anyway.
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Thankfully for me, I never use the same password for more than one site. So even if my email was among the 500 million that had been hacked (don't know for sure if it was or not), the hackers could have only used it for Yahoo, but not on any of my other accounts on any other website. Of course, once I got the alert a week ago to change my password, I certainly did so, so that old password is now no longer useful for anything.
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Whew, for a second there I thought you said YouTube. I'd be in a barrel of nails if they'd gotten ahold of my Youtube password, since Google forces you to tie it into your email.
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Google sucks now as also since they force you to do that. And glad they also didn't get into my YouTube also since I have a lot of private stuff I watch on there. And I think the yahoo crisis is over by now since no new reports where said. And Verizon now owns yahoo. Verizon is buying yahoo for 4.4 billion dollars.